Sunday, December 22, 2013

new job, new locale, new climate, return of an old philosophy...

.

as many of you know, I have long strived to make, in house, as absolutely many parts in my gear as possible... somehow, the past few years, in an effort to make maybe a few more things, but mostly thinking about division of labor leading to higher quality, I shopped a few parts out.... bad idea.... I lost a lot of money and all the control.... but I learned... and I learned that hard lesson relatively early in my life.. and now I am really excited to have that lesson propelling me forward.... on my old philosophy.... I now dream of having blocks of raw materials dropped off at one door and finished goods going out the other... huge blocks of brass, steel, tantalum, tungsten, copper, silver!...

reality will bring me back down eventually, (let's all hope I make some tubes first!)... but for now, I am happily learning to master this machine:

you may recognize the fellow in the background... that's my fellow hifiheroin addict..... I can't believe this is the only photo I have of the Hurco... I really like their new styling... very deco.. and I *love* hammertone grey...

the Hurco does cool stuff like this:

to within a ten thousandth of an inch! yep, that is the tolerance to which I trammed the sub plate (Robert calls this a spoil board) that we made.... one-thirtieth of the diameter of a human hair.... so this will help me catch up on some orders that include metal work....

in general, I am finally feeling like I am again on the rails... I knew I was headed in the correct direction, but it just felt a bit like I was bumping along railroad ties.... I am finally feeling like that serene late afternoon photo above.... taken from my new spot....

oh... I almost forgot... one person is not happy about this new venture... Bessie... this is her expressing her displeasure in the form of riding low after a metal pickup.... she clearly likes walnut better than brass... I am teaching her that they go *together*...

My first real job was helping my manufacturing company justify 3 axis CNC Drill/Mills. Feed it a nice piece of 316 stainless and it is simply amazing what it can produce. You should have had that machine in Memphis so I could play with it.